And vitamin C. Lots of it. It is taken for granted these days that we need plenty of protein to maintain our muscles and connective tissues. However what seems to be less thoroughly discussed is the fact that protein is utterly useless unless your body can break it down into its constituent parts, amino acids, and reconfigure it in the form required for a given role. Your body needs lots of things to do this, including lots of minerals often present in abundance in a good diet. Except vitamin C is often lacking. Plenty of fresh fruit and veg will sort that out.
Perhaps your injury had less to do with the condition of your body than it did your ability to take ukemi. Just a thought.
I take full responsibility on this minor injury. I don't think my teacher is a fraud, even if the story seems a bit weird. Although I do think he should teach us more about the whole physical conditioning to prevent situations like this, but as a beginner in martial arts I don't feel like I'm in a position to question his teaching and call him out on stuff like this. A quick google search gets you there, sure, but I won't reveal publicly where I'm studying, for obvious reasons :yeleyes: Why are you asking? Does it matter who my teacher is? Thanks for your contribution. What does YMMV mean, though? Of course bro, I'm just a beginner and I'm new to the concept of receiving practice attacks.
I imagine it's hard being an instructor. They have to do so many trade offs. If you were at a martial arts school in ancient China or Japan, you'd be doing many hours per day, in between your farming or other manual labouring jobs. The modern world doesn't afford us that opportunity. We get a few hours per week in between our office jobs. In those few hours, your instructor has to teach you an art that many practiced for a lifetime. He/she wants to make sure you are fit and strong nd conditioned but must surely be aware that if they do aerobics and pushups for the entire session, they'd soon have no students left. So all they can do is speed through a quick warm up and then get on with what you've paid them to teach. If I was an instructor, it would frustrate me that I couldn't be sure my students were generally tough enough for the training. That's not meant to sound bad by the way, I just mean that martial arts training is tough. In our class, I get the distinct impression as we speed through a too brief warm up that our instructor is simply showing us exercises that we can spend more time on outside of class. To be fair, he even says as much sometimes. I personally do a lot of stretching at home and out and about. There are endless opportunities. A foot on a low garden wall and stretch the hamstrings, one arm sideways pushups while leaning against a wall. When I got for a toilet break at work, if nobody else is in there, is have a practice. I might do some basic stretch kicks or punching drill, or I might perform a kata/form/hyung.
I do a lot of body weight squats, and bodyweight single leg deadlifts, they really help you with ichi monji no kamae, and the sanshin no kata, theyll also help you with most nage waza. Rows/pull ups will really help gripping ability, keep your body strong when recieving standing shoulderlocks etc and fix your back problem. I do them daily as part of my morning routine.
No weight or bar, just my bodyweight. And I also lift weights twice a week, and then forget about blogging on here!
Wake up drink coffee do 2 exercises from a choice of squats/pressups/kettlebell swings/SLD/sit ups/TGU/etc stretch in one pose / practise tski from shizen no kamae/footwork drills for a good five minutes whilst watching youtube/listening to a podcast eat breakfast realise im late for work rush to work pretend to enguage with my coworkers lunch!
Thanks for sharing, dude. To keep the topic rolling, I find it kinda weird that nobody out there has any knowledge on the kind of common training ninjas used to practice traditionnally. I mean since they were pretty much tactical forces, there has had to be some basics that they all followed aside from the art itself, no? If anybody could point me out to any documentation regarding the subject I'd be glad. Tough I hear there is very little documentation on the beginnings of ninjutsu & it feels like I'm the only one around here who's interested in the traditional ninja lifestyle as much as the combat.
1) Most places make you sign a damage waiver. 2) What blows me away is that the teacher doesn't do the conditioning exercises in your class. For instance, I have been doing MMA (Muay Thai and BJJ). In these classes the teacher kills you with exercise. In the MT class, it's very physical; push ups, squats, burpee, running laps, skipping rope, etc. She really conditions you to do the MT and for the sparring. It's very tough, and you feel like you are going to die at the end of the class. The BJJ class makes you work pretty hard as well, but most of the exercise is rolling (sparring). Also, they have a fight team at my school and they make you come to a set training program to do that. The make absolutely sure that you are in shape enough to do the class. That's bad if your teacher isn't conditioning you. 3) However, if you are looking for a good weight training program google Fierce 5
''Waivers of liability in sports and recreational activities are usually designed to protect the organizers of such activities from accepting responsibility when their negligence causes someone else to suffer injury. Often times, such waivers are not enforceable. Our Ontario courts have not recognized or enforced such waivers where the sports/recreational facility failed to take reasonable care for the safety of participants. If sports and recreational facilities take reasonable care to ensure that their facilities are reasonably safe for participants, then they don’t need waivers. Our Ontario courts already recognize that when people participate in sports, they assume a heightened risk of injury. That risk is inherent in the sport and the degree of risk assumed depends on the sport. Our courts do not require sports/recreational facilities to be perfect or prevent all injury. They only require them to take reasonable care in the circumstances. In light of this, a sports/recreation facility does not need a waiver to protect itself from frivolous lawsuits. A liability waiver is nothing more than a facility’s futile effort to avoid responsibility for injuries resulting from its failure to take reasonable care. It’s futile because our Ontario courts do not recognize waivers, and will not enforce them, in circumstances where the sports/recreational facility failed to take reasonable care for the safety of participants.'' http://kaganlaw.ca/waivers-releases-liability-sports-recreational-activities/ FYI LFD
Try reading Kacem Zoughari books and interviews, theirs plenty of information available on these subjects.
You know I have mixed feelings about this. Yes I think that the class needs to be challenging enough to help you to develop strength/endurance at what you are doing. Consider this side of things, do you want to pay huge amounts to a martial arts teacher to tell you how to do conditioning exercises, particularly if that means that you will be getting proportionally less time learning your art? Did the OP ever clarify what was missing from the class that there was a need to further discuss strength and conditioning? An example might be for a BJJ or Judo coach to have you doing 1 1/2 hours of calisthenics as they might be considered, for an average person, good conditioning exercises. Problem is that way too little time would be spent on technique (rolling). You do want to get better at what you do and develop sport specific conditioning but not every sport has an appropriate way of combining things so both skills and conditioning are trained. So let's look at a ancient/more modern approach. When you wrestle (at least when I wrestled) or play judo you start with some warm ups, perhaps drills (uchikomi) , calisthenics and finally getting on to some technique work. The pre-technique stuff might take 15 minutes or so. The technique part might be working through a skill/technique either standing or on the ground and then practicing it in pairs. We would work on the skill and then move into actively working the technique against a resisting opponent. At the end of the session we would warm down and stretch. This in total might take 1 1/2 to 2 hours. As far as strength training went we knew (or should I say our coaches knew) that general strength and conditioning is thought best done outside of one's sport. All sports can benefit from independent S & C, with tweaking relative to any particular needs within the sport. People, whether rugby players/wrestlers or ultimate frisbee players might do a general strengthening weight program , eg a 5 x 5 such as Strong Lifts, Starting Strength or the one's listed online on Strengtheory. Most athletes might be doing some additional cardio training, like the boxer doing road work, relative to their sport. What ''blows me away'' is the local martial arts class where the kids spend hours doing calisthenics and never spend any time learning to apply their techniques against an opponent. What ''blows me away'' is the local class where the students have wonderful technique but not enough power behind it to move an opponent who is aggressive/bigger/not a classmate. So yes I think a certain level of S & C is needed in training but for many advanced practitioners a program outside of classes is a must. For the OP that might not be needed yet since being a relative beginner the class itself may be enough of a challenge. For the senior students in the class something else outside of class would be a necessity. Long answer but I hope that it explains my perspective. LFD
Thanks everybody for your contribution to the thread. While doing my homework I found this chapter in one of Hatsumi Sensei's books that explains a bit more about what I was looking for. The book is "The Way of The Ninja : Secret Techniques" There is a whole chapter about training, conditioning and the traditional ninja diet. He talks, among other things, about walking on ice with clogs to practice balance and to learn how to move silently. Along with tree climbing, leaping and 6 ways of walking. He also suggests that legs flexibility is one of the most important things to focus on during your training. I would strongly recommend this book for any practitioner of the art who, like me, is as much interested in the ninja lifestyle as the art itself. I hope I'm helping other beginners at the same time I'm learning for myself.
You can do all those at home by yourself. You - go to school to "learn" and come back home to "train". - don't go to school to "train" and come back home to "rest".
True, as you get older you spend less time "warming up", stretching and things like that. It's something you should be doing first thing in the morning, not at the dojo at 7pm. Ironically, when you're young and in great shape is when you need to warm up and stretch the most, so that you can learn properly. And then hopefully those habits will last for decades. If I'm in half as good a shape as Hatsumi, Tanemura and Manaka sensei are when I get to their ages, I'll consider myself blessed.
I think there's a big difference between fitness, warming up, and stretching, Its a topic that often gets confused. Warming up is literally that, getting your heart and lungs working to increase your body temperature and prevent injures occurring. It will help your fitness at the start, but not by that much. Stretching isnt warming up, (although mobility drills are warming up, and look a little like stretching), and should only done once your warm, theirs been a few studies and the ideal time to stretch is after training, not before. General fitness work can be done at home, ideally on days when your not training, or not training hard. evidence - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22316148 easy article on the subject - https://www.bu.edu/today/2015/stretch-before-exercise-not-so-fast/
